mindyourmind wrote:I am not going to give too much direction to the question at the outset, as I would love to see what type of responses we get. Please therefor answer the question as it may make sense to you, at this stage. In particular, please note that I have made up my own mind on this, and I am not really seeking for any definitive answers or lectures, I would love to see what your own ideas are on this, for your path.

Mindyourmind, since you are not looking for answers, then what is the true purpose of your thread? To examine others' level of realization?

Not at all. While I am not seeking for answers for myself I love to see, and try to understand, the processes that others go through in walking along their paths. I sometimes learn from that.

I also wonder to what extent we question and investigate some of the important concepts on our paths, and if we sometimes just glibly accept concepts because it is cool, or expected of us.

If, in that process, I can make others ask some questions of their own practice then that is a bonus.

mindyourmind wrote:Why do you accept that a state of non-duality, in your practice and everyday life, as a goal and as a path of liberation, is to be desired and achieved?Why do we accept this as such an important truth?

Faith. Dharma and my own observations have adequately demonstrated to me that dualistic mind is the cause of suffering. And I have faith that there's an alternative.

Pure faith - a much misunderstood, maligned and under-utilized practice tool. I like your answer.

But more than just the "right answer" I actually want to see how people arrive at this "goal", where they want to reach a state of non-duality, to realize it. Is it given enough thought, is it understood from own experience?[/quote]

Is thread-killer is an affectionate way of saying, "Thank you, no further questions your honor." ??

I never knew/thought that the non-duality provided any relief from suffering directly. I've glimpsed non-duality and because of my dichotomies I sometimes find the non-duality painful like anything else. It seems that by recognizing the suffering itself I can map the reversal - through causality I can come to correct the mistakes I make in solidifying that which is not solid to start with... by glimpsing through identity with direct experience and the courage to do something differently, i simply break the habit of its strength. What provides relief is actually (in my own experience) the courage that comes from knowing and being open to the full vulnerability of uncertainty and knowing from already verified direct experience how it's all been a passing dream and the present is a future slipping into a past tense. And by knowing, I mean really KNOWING it when something is happening in real-time by trusting in the moment's fleeting illusion that it's shown me a trillion times before...

Why does anyone want to reach any state? I don't know that reaching any state is the point. It's the not reaching that seems to matter most and create the gap that allows for real insight to emerge...

mindyourmind wrote:Not at all. While I am not seeking for answers for myself I love to see, and try to understand, the processes that others go through in walking along their paths. I sometimes learn from that.

I also wonder to what extent we question and investigate some of the important concepts on our paths, and if we sometimes just glibly accept concepts because it is cool, or expected of us.

If, in that process, I can make others ask some questions of their own practice then that is a bonus.

That's fair enough. Thank you for replying! Though I have no answer, I am interested to listen to your conclusion through your experience.

"My view is as vast as the sky, but my actions are finer than flour" ~ Padmasambhava ~

mindyourmind wrote:Not at all. While I am not seeking for answers for myself I love to see, and try to understand, the processes that others go through in walking along their paths. I sometimes learn from that.

I also wonder to what extent we question and investigate some of the important concepts on our paths, and if we sometimes just glibly accept concepts because it is cool, or expected of us.

If, in that process, I can make others ask some questions of their own practice then that is a bonus.

There is also the language of experience which cant be employed here since it has to be reserved for the interaction between teacher and student.

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." –Arundhati Roy

mindyourmind wrote:I never knew/thought that the non-duality provided any relief from suffering directly. I've glimpsed non-duality and because of my dichotomies I sometimes find the non-duality painful like anything else.

Painful in what way?

mindyourmind wrote: Why does anyone want to reach any state? I don't know that reaching any state is the point. It's the not reaching that seems to matter most and create the gap that allows for real insight to emerge...

It's usually not presented as a state to acquire, but as one's true nature... and describing it as one's "true nature" has the flavor of an underlying actuality which is veiled by obscurations. But I'm sure it is perceived as a truth to be desired because the notion naturally resonates with people. Being told that one is essentially dreaming and that this experience (we take to be everyday life) is equivalent to a dream, should certainly come across as a strong wake up call.

However a nondual experience isn't necessarily liberation, one can have all types of absorption experiences but still be wrought with afflicted view. I remember in one of Tulku Urgyen's books he told a story of a practitioner who had come to his teacher after a long retreat to "debrief". He proceeded to inform his teacher that he had all sorts of auspicious experiences, extended states of absorption where there was no separation between he and his surroundings, feelings of omniscience where he felt the entire universe within him, and so on and so forth. And the teacher essentially looked at the student and said "I'm sorry... keep practicing".

I do agree with you that creating that gap is important... because in merely aspiring to achieve a state of nonduality(or liberation itself) the very aspiration can become a roadblock if one doesn't know any better. The rapid nature of dzogchen is derived from it being a non-causal vehicle. But that being said, if reaching does take place then reaching is appropriate, if "creating the gap" takes place then that is also appropriate. Genuine realizations regarding what works and what doesn't work are most important. One can be told something won't work, but if that advice is only taken at face value, that initial acceptance just becomes another form of reaching more often than not. Without the process of a legitimate personal investigation which leads to the essential discovery of said futility for oneself, the mere acceptance of an alleged futility doesn't mean much. The journey is personal, and all you can do is hope that each individual is ruthless and earnest on their respective paths.

You ask for personal experience,mindyourmind. When responding to your message earlier, something rooted in personal experience did indeed come to mind and I thought of including it in my response. Owing to constraints of time, I did not include it. Whether or not it is indeed relevant to the issue you raise, I am not sure and leave it to you and to others on the forum to judge.

For a good many years, my main practice was a specific method of mindfulness of breathing which had been brought to the United Kingdom by Nai Boonman, then a bhikkhu. It was and still is practised and taught by the Samatha Trust, a trust founded by students of Nai Boonman.The trust was called "the Samatha Trust" because it follows the teaching of the Buddha in the suttas by valuing achievement of the jhaanas/dhyaanas as the basis for the development of insight, in contrast to the newer "dry insight" methods, which were and remain dominant in many contemporary schools of Theravada meditation practice, and which regard the jhaanas as distractions at best and as negative and highly dangerous obstacles to insight at worst. Nai Boonman was Ajahn Brahmavamso's first meditation teacher when he was still, as I think he puts it, a long-haired student at Cambridge way back when, and it was from Nai Boonman and sitting-practice in the context of the Samatha Trust that he first learned, before he was ordained, that development of the jhaanas is important. In practice, the method taught and practised within the Samatha Trust is samatha-vipassanaa.

Perhaps a year after beginning to practice in the context of the Samatha Trust, I went on my first week-long period of strict practice. I was rather proud of my ability to sit for what seemed to me to be long-ish stretches in a sort of half half-lotus position, in which the right foot rested on top of the folded crook of the left leg rather than fully on top of the left thigh. The ability to sit in this fashion for forty minutes or so at a stretch had been achieved by dint of persistance and quite a bit of effort.

Each of us had an individual room in which each of us did most of our practice, alternating sitting meditation and mindful walking. Each person would report to a leader of the retreat once every day, the only time one would actually talk; we would gather for a light breakfast and for a meal before the sun reached the mid-point of the sky each day, and all of us would meet for a Dhamma talk and a communal sitting each afternoon. Otherwise, it was solitary alternation of sitting and mindful walking from the early hours of the morning until late at night.

As a novice to this kind of Theravadin strict practice, I found the first two days unproblematical. On day three, however, I began to discover that knees had rather alarming properties. Catching a glimpse of someone sitting in the garden within sight of the window of my room made it clear that I was not alone in discovering this: the person in question was ending a session of sitting-practice, and the painstaking care with which he unfolded his legs ever so slowly said volumes. Fran, who gave the Dhamma-talk that afternoon, began by simply saying "knees" and saying no more. There were sounds of slow, painful and nervous movements throughout the hall in response, as well as muted and decidedly nervous giggles. The word clearly struck sensitive nerves.

Most people managed to work through the painful sensation by some time the next day; but being a fully paid-up and card-carrying wimp, I did not. My sittings were plagued by terrible pain, egged on by even more terrible images and fears, which broke down my ability to sit almost completely. "Pain is a mechanism with an important physical function", I would find myself thinking. "It is a signal that harm is about to be done, and is meant to get one to stop doing whatever is causing physical damage." Images of needle-sharp crystals of uric acid lacerating the knee-joint loomed large, as did fears that I would do myself irreparable damage if I held my posture. And so, I found myself holding my posture for shorter and shorter periods -- at its worst, probably just a minute or two, breaking my posture and then forcing myself back into it. It was really a double-whammy: there certainly was physical pain, but anxiety about it -- attachment and aversion, and seeing the pain as a something an "I" -- namely me -- suffered, magnified it manyfold. It wasn't just that it was "eina", to use a South African word of Khoi-San origin for "ouch", but that I was attached to the "eina" and fretted over it.

The breakthrough came some time during day five, when I somehow found myself looking at the sensation in my knees with dispassion. There was a flux of sensation and I knew intellectually that it was pain, but somehow the "eina", the "ouch", was no longer there. It was just sensations rising and passing away, and the emotional investment -- the aversion and the fear -- vanished when one saw the sensations simply as sensations, as experience without an owner. This was actually quite disturbing at first: the pain had been unpleasant, to be sure, but it was mine. Where had it gone too? Had I been robbed? At some level, I came to realise, I had been attached to the pain. And so, initially, I probed my knees mentally, as it were, twinges of the "eina" came back, and I actually found this somewhat reassuring at first. Soon enough, however, the sense of strangeness disappeared, and one was left simply experiencing the arising and passing of sensations dispassionately without any sense of "this is mine" or "this is me" and, importantly, at least temporarily free of the grasping which is characteristic of dualistic vision.

It was a modest lesson. Others who participated in that strict practice probably went on to work through the far more subtle unpleasant feelings as distinct from grosser physical sensations, and perhaps also worked through the pleasant feelings which are an even tougher nut to crack. Perhaps some tasted jhaana or some of the jhaanas -- who knows? What I do know is that I got nowhere near jhaana, and that for me the strict practice was dominated by working through the pain exacerbated by my own attachment and propensity for seeing sensations as personal property, as it were, rather than as just arising and passing away, perhaps a play of energy in which subject and object have no purchase. A lesson I learnt: seeing experience as it is, without attachment and without aversion, the "eina" -- dukkha, really -- loses its purchase. When this is fully integrated -- something I was patently not able to do ... well, I'll leave it to you to draw the conclusion and to judge whether it is relevant to your query, or whether it is way

mindyourmind wrote:I never knew/thought that the non-duality provided any relief from suffering directly. I've glimpsed non-duality and because of my dichotomies I sometimes find the non-duality painful like anything else.

Painful in what way?

mindyourmind wrote: Why does anyone want to reach any state? I don't know that reaching any state is the point. It's the not reaching that seems to matter most and create the gap that allows for real insight to emerge...

It's usually not presented as a state to acquire, but as one's true nature... and describing it as one's "true nature" has the flavor of an underlying actuality which is veiled by obscurations. But I'm sure it is perceived as a truth to be desired because the notion naturally resonates with people. Being told that one is essentially dreaming and that this experience (we take to be everyday life) is equivalent to a dream, should certainly come across as a strong wake up call.

However a nondual experience isn't necessarily liberation, one can have all types of absorption experiences but still be wrought with afflicted view. I remember in one of Tulku Urgyen's books he told a story of a practitioner who had come to his teacher after a long retreat to "debrief". He proceeded to inform his teacher that he had all sorts of auspicious experiences, extended states of absorption where there was no separation between he and his surroundings, feelings of omniscience where he felt the entire universe within him, and so on and so forth. And the teacher essentially looked at the student and said "I'm sorry... keep practicing".

I do agree with you that creating that gap is important... because in merely aspiring to achieve a state of nonduality(or liberation itself) the very aspiration can become a roadblock if one doesn't know any better. The rapid nature of dzogchen is derived from it being a non-causal vehicle. But that being said, if reaching does take place then reaching is appropriate, if "creating the gap" takes place then that is also appropriate. Genuine realizations regarding what works and what doesn't work are most important. One can be told something won't work, but if that advice is only taken at face value, that initial acceptance just becomes another form of reaching more often than not. Without the process of a legitimate personal investigation which leads to the essential discovery of said futility for oneself, the mere acceptance of an alleged futility doesn't mean much. The journey is personal, and all you can do is hope that each individual is ruthless and earnest on their respective paths.

sutta nippata 761: ''the holy ones know it as highest bliss, the personality's cessation. repugnant to worldly folks but not to those that clearly see.''

non duality is seen after extinction of the little flame of ego. the I. i have experimented with this, reforming an ego after its extinction, and lo and behold non duality could no longer be seen until once again ego was cleared out. so the barrier to seeing non duality is ego. ''I'' perception.

it may take a while for you to see non duality, even after the flame of ego is snuffed out, this is since non duality is a perception, it is seen after one sees the external environment to be the same as the internal environment. this seeing of called Prajna.

you may start by seeing the sameness of all external objects, then eventually you perceive the sameness of subject and object. the sameness of within and without.

seeing non duality is significant because it reveals the inner state of attainment. as one advances or progresses one sees more and more. my student/teacher who insists that its an eternal progression and so even the buddha continues to undergo progress... though of course ultimately there is no buddha to speak of nor progress to be observed.

seeing non duality is seeing emptiness. it is since all things are seen as mind, or emptiness that we say ''non duality'' or oneness. some have attained awareness of outer non duality, but do not see themselves as one with this external environment. levels of progression.

i have said too much. waffling on!

best wishes, Tom.

in any matters of importance. dont rely on me. i may not know what i am talking about. take what i say as mere speculation. i am not ordained. nor do i have a formal training. i do believe though that if i am wrong on any point. there are those on this site who i hope will quickly point out my mistakes.

mindyourmind wrote:Why do you accept that a state of non-duality, in your practice and everyday life, as a goal and as a path of liberation, is to be desired and achieved?Why do we accept this as such an important truth?

Faith. Dharma and my own observations have adequately demonstrated to me that dualistic mind is the cause of suffering. And I have faith that there's an alternative.

Pure faith - a much misunderstood, maligned and under-utilized practice tool. I like your answer.

It's an interesting question that you asked. From the point of view of the dualistic mind, it makes no sense at all to accomplish nondualistic vision. The whole concept kills any hope of satisfying samsaric mind. For an ordinary person who experiences everything dualistically, it is certainly a matter of faith to imagine that there's a completely different way to "be," that's actually better than the samsaric mind's wildest dreams!

dakini_boi wrote:It's an interesting question that you asked. From the point of view of the dualistic mind, it makes no sense at all to accomplish nondualistic vision. The whole concept kills any hope of satisfying samsaric mind. For an ordinary person who experiences everything dualistically, it is certainly a matter of faith to imagine that there's a completely different way to "be," that's actually better than the samsaric mind's wildest dreams!

Considering Buddhist's Sutra "science", it is not from blind faith, but from valid investigation. Santideva: Once what had to be analyzed has been analyzed,The analysis has no basis left.Since there is no basis, it does not continue.This is expressed as nirvanaThe dualistic mind makes no sense at all to accomplish nondualistic vision, and to accomplish everything else. It is called samsara.

mindyourmind for some reason when the [dualistic] mind dissapears the suffering also dissapear. It's like you would cool down the fire. And then you also know why you suffer and where and why does it come from. But there's no "you" in that, and by that it's also terrifying. Maybe not instantly everything is cleared up, maybe needs more time to clear up - depends on everyone's own condition but it's really worth at least to get a glympse of this, mate. It really is worth the efforts.

booker wrote:mindyourmind for some reason when the [dualistic] mind dissapears the suffering also dissapear. It's like you would cool down the fire. And then you also know why you suffer and where and why does it come from. But there's no "you" in that, and by that it's also terrifying. Maybe not instantly everything is cleared up, maybe needs more time to clear up - depends on everyone's own condition but it's really worth at least to get a glympse of this, mate. It really is worth the efforts.

Best to youb.

Does the suffering disappear, or do we deal differently with the suffering?Or does the sufferer disappear?

mindyourmind wrote:Does the suffering disappear, or do we deal differently with the suffering?Or does the sufferer disappear?

The doer, the action itself and the result of the action are never seperated. So, when the one of the three inseparable aspects is changing, the whole structure is changing because everything is interdependent.

"My view is as vast as the sky, but my actions are finer than flour" ~ Padmasambhava ~

mindyourmind wrote:Does the suffering disappear, or do we deal differently with the suffering?Or does the sufferer disappear?

The doer, the action itself and the result of the action are never seperated. So, when the one of the three inseparable aspects is changing, the whole structure is changing because everything is interdependent.

If suffering is an "inseparable aspect", how can it disappear?

Change must imply duality. Non-duality cannot change.

Why do you believe that suffering changes at all?

Again, in fairness to any poster - I am not seeking answers for myself, I want to see how much some of the members here (and this will be the same for Mahamudra and Dzogchen practitioners) have really thought this Great Truth through, how much it is understood.

mindyourmind wrote:Does the suffering disappear, or do we deal differently with the suffering?Or does the sufferer disappear?

The doer, the action itself and the result of the action are never seperated. So, when the one of the three inseparable aspects is changing, the whole structure is changing because everything is interdependent.

If suffering is an "inseparable aspect", how can it disappear?

Change must imply duality. Non-duality cannot change.

Why do you believe that suffering changes at all?

Again, in fairness to any poster - I am not seeking answers for myself, I want to see how much some of the members here (and this will be the same for Mahamudra and Dzogchen practitioners) have really thought this Great Truth through, how much it is understood.

The whole procedure of communication through DW is limited in the spectrum of Duality! I never did any affirmation or negation, but pointed out that everything is interdependent. The words are ciphering notions which subsequently they need a capable deciphering for being correctly understood. That's why I am not fond of analyzing Non-Duality and other absolute terms through concepts. Such semantic analysis does not lead anywhere, but only to deeper wandering in dark conceptual Labyrinths.

"My view is as vast as the sky, but my actions are finer than flour" ~ Padmasambhava ~